Alright, this is one of those moments when a normal person is forced to become terminal typing freak (sorry guys =)) against their will...

I have a FreeBSD7 server box in my garage that serves the computers on my network with files. It has been a godsend: 2 1TB SATA drives raid-1'd and I have a peace of mind that all my files are secure in one place in the house that has doubled as my office.

The box has basic non-gui install of FreeBSD7 and I access it through WinSCP from other boxes around the house. Voila! So easy!

Well it was until I decided to bring some order to it - sort files in the right directories. This is usually a snap in XP, but UNIX would not allow things to be simple I guess: When I want to empty out few folders into another folder ("DUMP") and there are same files in both folders (one I am copying from (Downloads) and one I am moving them to(DUMP)) I get an error:

My guess was that it found similar named files and flipped out only leaving me the options to skip or abort (I skipped). So I decided to do it through command line via Putty. Friend of mine suggested this command through bash:

These options are crucial because some files may have changed and I may want to rename the file and save it as a newer version while keeping the old one. I usually find this out by looking at the file sizes.

Is there a way to do the same from command line?

I asked my friend and he just said I will have to manually look all the information up (to compare) and delete or rename. This would be madness when I have to deal with hundreds or thousands of files...I would be sitting in front of the monitor for weeks just busy with one task. He also said "I''m sure you can write a script" I guess that's the best way to tell the noob to bug off.

how many directories, how many files?
...........
I usually copy (cp -iv) then delete (/bin/rm -iv ) OR use mmv (a port)
..........
or do command(s) such as
find . -type f -name "a*.fil" -exec mmv {} /new_dir \;
............
better, quicker ways but since the situation probably won't repeat, no
since to script it, just do it slower

cd /usr/ports/misc/mmv
make install
rehash
..............
you need the ports tree for the above commands to all succeed, and an
active Internet connection
mmv only works on one file at a time. With thousands of files you would
use the longer command lines for most of them (if you know some have
unique names, mmv might be quicker for just those)